How to Track All Possible Treatments for Coronavirus
There is still no cure for the coronavirus, but dozens of drugs and treatments are being tested against it . And you are not alone if you are confused as to which of these are simple features and which are reputedly useful. Science changes from day to day, and sometimes a cure makes headlines based on data that doesn’t turn out to be as reliable as it might seem.
This tracker from the New York Times aims to clear up some of the confusion. Unlike the STAT tracker , which tracks the path of each drug through the regulatory process, this tracker assesses the strength of evidence for each drug as well as multiple non-pharmaceutical treatments.
To date, the tracker lists:
- Currently, there are two widely used treatments: ventilators and the easy way to put the patient face down to relieve pressure on their lungs.
- Two “promising” treatments: remdesivir, an antiviral; and dexamethasone, a corticosteroid that works against the immune system (yes, this is counterintuitive) to reduce inflammation in critically ill patients.
- Ten procedures with “preliminary or mixed” evidence , including convalescent plasma (from the blood of recovered patients) and anticoagulants.
- Two “hopeless” treatments : hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine and a combination of the antiviral drugs lopinavir and ritonavir.
- Three treatments are considered “pseudoscience or fraudulent” : drinking alcohol or injecting bleach and disinfectants , which you might have guessed is terribly dangerous; exposure to the body of ultraviolet radiation is also impractical and ineffective; and drugs containing silver that have been flagged by the FDA as fraudulent in advertisements for the treatment of COVID-19.
Each category should be read with a proviso. For example, “widely used” treatments are judged not by the strength of the evidence, but by how prevalent the treatment is at present. We hope these things are related, but this is not guaranteed.
A treatment with “promising” evidence is not necessarily the next miracle cure. Sometimes they can only help a little (perhaps by slightly lowering the mortality rate of critically ill patients). “Preliminary or mixed evidence” of treatment may also be ineffective if successful.
On the other hand, some of the “not promising” treatments may not have been tested enough or under the right conditions to determine their true usefulness. As we learn more about the virus and as more trials are conducted, expect treatments to move from category to category to keep up with science.